Still having issues with pinching skin, pain in the a?? so to speak. I have some pearl Izumi bib shorts on order, tried them on and wow! So much more comfortable, hopefully they will be better on the bike.

Will update how they go. Been for another 20km the other day, still paying for it.

I am back in again ... I have lost about 10kgs from my worst point in the last year. Not surprising as I had over a year of no exercise at all. But been back on the bike for exactly 1 year now. Finally in the last 6 weeks I am starting to feel good on the bike again... god it takes a long time.Start of the year I was about 104kgs.25/03/2011 100.5 kgs BMI 26.7 ... aim to get down to a BMI of about 22 (82-83 kgs).

toolonglegs wrote:I am back in again ... I have lost about 10kgs from my worst point in the last year. Not surprising as I had over a year of no exercise at all. But been back on the bike for exactly 1 year now. Finally in the last 6 weeks I am starting to feel good on the bike again... god it takes a long time.Start of the year I was about 104kgs.25/03/2011 100.5 kgs BMI 26.7 ... aim to get down to a BMI of about 22 (82-83 kgs).

Shouldn't take you to long with all those hills you have to ride up and down.

I've reached another milestone today... broke through the 100kg mark for the first time in over 20 years. WoooHooo!99.5kgI haven't even done much riding lately. The weather up here on the Sunshine Coast has been terrible for weeks... no make that months.Now my goal is 90kg and ultimately 87kg.The challenge is to manage things while we're on a 3 week ALL INCLUSIVE Mediterranean cruise coming up in April.

There are only two types of cyclist.Those that have crashed and those that are about to.

I'm hoping to crack double digits this year too, with a long term goal of 80-something.

Thanks mate, yes I've come down from 127kg in early November last year.Our biggest hurdle (yours, mine and all big losers) isn't losing the weight... the biggest issue is maintaining our new weight after shedding our excess.Good luck to you on your journey, I've just invested in a book called 'Big Fat Lies' by an Aussie called David Gillespie that lost 40kg and kept it off.Google it if you like. He maintains and argues his case intelligently, that sugar is our No1 enemy, not fat.I suspect he might be right.

There are only two types of cyclist.Those that have crashed and those that are about to.

I'm hoping to crack double digits this year too, with a long term goal of 80-something.

Thanks mate, yes I've come down from 127kg in early November last year.Our biggest hurdle (yours, mine and all big losers) isn't losing the weight... the biggest issue is maintaining our new weight after shedding our excess.Good luck to you on your journey, I've just invested in a book called 'Big Fat Lies' by an Aussie called David Gillespie that lost 40kg and kept it off.Google it if you like. He maintains and argues his case intelligently, that sugar is our No1 enemy, not fat.I suspect he might be right.

Yeah I agree on the sugar. For me also, I eat waay too much bread day to day. Toast for brekky, ham and cheese sandwich for lunch etc. I recently started riding with a guy who's lost and kept off 45kgs in an effort to control his diabetes. He did simple things like getting kebabs without the wrap and eating gluten free breads. Like me, he was addicted to bread. I'm trying to eat more natural stuff now. I've given up sugar in my coffee and am almost weened off the diet cokes. I'm smashing the tinned tuna as a mid-meal snack and am trying to eat more green leafy stuff, eggs, bananas etc... I've put this weight on over 20 years, so I want to try and take it off properly so the new habits stick.

It's fairly easy to lose some weight through exercise, if you do enough of it. I lost around 15kgs a year ago through lots of riding, but when I moved and stopped riding I put the weight back on. I hadn't changed the way I ate.

I haven't received the book 'Big Fat Lies' yet so I'm still in the dark with respect to sugar.Are you saying, contrary to most (so called) expert opinion, that eating fruit is counterproductive to weight loss and the maintenance of your new healthy weight?

There are only two types of cyclist.Those that have crashed and those that are about to.

I haven't received the book 'Big Fat Lies' yet so I'm still in the dark with respect to sugar.Are you saying, contrary to most (so called) expert opinion, that eating fruit is counterproductive to weight loss and the maintenance of your new healthy weight?

Fruit is a good thing as certain types have high levels of vitamin C, potassium, fibre etc, BUT all fruit contains sugar.

Did you know there's 15-20grams of sugar in 1 banana & the same in an apple ?

I limit my fruit intake to 1-2 pieces a day. It all adds up way too quickly.

Dried fruit is worse than Coke which is why all those so called "healthy" mueslis & muesli bars are so high in sugar.

I've spent many many hours reading the labels in the super market isles only to be very disappointed by the outcome.

Read the ingredient list & nutritional information on everything you purchase & cut back on the sugars. You'll be amazed at the results.

Unfortunately there aren't any ingredient listings in the fruit/veg isles. So you wouldn't know that if you ate 1kg of grapes you have just consumed the equivalent amount of sugar as 4 cans of Coke.

I haven't received the book 'Big Fat Lies' yet so I'm still in the dark with respect to sugar.Are you saying, contrary to most (so called) expert opinion, that eating fruit is counterproductive to weight loss and the maintenance of your new healthy weight?

Fruit is a good thing as certain types have high levels of vitamin C, potassium, fibre etc, BUT all fruit contains sugar.

Did you know there's 15-20grams of sugar in 1 banana & the same in an apple ?

I limit my fruit intake to 1-2 pieces a day. It all adds up way too quickly.

Dried fruit is worse than Coke which is why all those so called "healthy" mueslis & muesli bars are so high in sugar.

I've spent many many hours reading the labels in the super market isles only to be very disappointed by the outcome.

Read the ingredient list & nutritional information on everything you purchase & cut back on the sugars. You'll be amazed at the results.

Unfortunately there aren't any ingredient listings in the fruit/veg isles. So you wouldn't know that if you ate 1kg of grapes you have just consumed the equivalent amount of sugar as 4 cans of Coke.

This is very long post and I may upset some by doing it but I do it with the best intentions. It is the Introduction to David Gillespie's new book 'Big Fat Lies' about sugar and poly-unsaturated oils and their impact on diet and health.(DISCLAIMER: Other than the fact that I have ordered the book, I have no other vested interest in its promotion.)

Diets and exercise won't help us lose weight. Vitamins and minerals are a waste of money and sometimes downright dangerous. Sugar makes us fat and sick. And polyunsaturated fat gives us cancer and works with sugar to give us heart disease. The evidence for all of these statements is abundant and unequivocal, but you won't hear anyone in the food and diet industries tell you so. If they did it would have an immediate impact on their sales, and when it comes to a choice between their money and your health, three guesses (oh, okay – one, then) which of these wins.

The sad truth is that people like you and me are uniquely vulnerable in a world of chronic disease caused by 'improvements' to our food supply. A choice between corporate profit today and your health in three decades is no choice to a drug or food company or their shareholders. A choice between a government bureaucrat staying 'on message' with what they've said for the last four decades and your future health is no choice to them if they want to keep their job. A choice between a charity (such as the Australian Heart Foundation) attacking the source of its corporate sponsorship and how well you might be in 2041 is no choice to the people whose jobs depend on that sponsorship.

Even your doctor, the one person paid to have your health uppermost in their mind, is protecting you with both hands tied behind their back. At least one new medical journal article appears every 26 seconds. Just to keep up, your doctor would need to read 3300 journal articles a day (and that's before they started on the backlog). Obviously, even the most studious and dedicated doctor is doing nothing of the sort – doctors report spending about four hours a week reading journals, which is still a fair bit of time. This means they rely on the same sources of information (only with more detail) as the rest of us: drug companies, food manufacturers, charities and government employees.

This is a book about truth. I'm not a nutritionist or a doctor. I don't have a diet or a magic food to sell you. I'm just a lawyer who's worried about my health and the health of my family and who has a lot of time on his hands. This book exists only because I want you to know what the evidence actually says. Lawyers are trained in only one useful thing – evidence. This book sets out the evidence about our food. That evidence could not be more clear-cut, and what to do about it could not be more obvious.

I've chosen to lay out this evidence in a book because books are the only form of mass media available to me that are not influenced by advertising. The companies that benefit from our continued consumption of sugar, polyunsaturated vegetable oils, statin drugs, vitamins and diet plans spend more on advertising (by a country mile) than all other businesses combined. A book it must be – there's no other way to communicate in detail the information it contains without the story being influenced by someone whose job depends on advertising.

What can we do?

Apart from this book, you don't need to buy anything. You just need to stop consuming foods containing two substances introduced into our diets in the 1850s – sugar and polyunsaturated vegetable oils – and avoid the 'cures' introduced after World War II. The inconvenient fact is that this means eliminating almost all processed foods from your diet.

The good news, however, is that saving yourself from the insidious damage being done by sugar and polyunsaturated vegetable oils is as simple as knowing what you're eating. The even better news is that it will cost you nothing. You don't need to pay a diet guru to become thin. You don't need to subsist on a diet of Tibetan cantaloupes infused with dolphin tears. You don't need to pay a muscle-bound fitness fanatic to abuse you in a public park. And you don't need to go to weekly meetings for a dose of group humiliation. By doing nothing apart from avoiding two ingredients, you'll lose weight, skip past a list of chronic diseases you couldn't jump over (even if you were being yelled at by a lycra-clad trainer) and save yourself a bucket of money while you're at it.

Our food supply

It might seem like our supermarkets are full of newfangled products that weren't there a week ago, let alone last century, but when we brush aside the marketing, very little has changed about our food supply in thousands of years. We're still mammals that require carbohydrates and some fats for fuel. And we still need protein to make our muscles and other bits. They can dress it up in a pretty box and claim it's new or better or healthier than it was last week, but our bodies have very simple food requirements. Our metabolism can't read labels and our biochemistry is what it is, no matter what a marketer might tell us.

There have, however, been two very important changes to our food supply in the last hundred years. These changes weren't introduced to make us healthier or better people, but for two very simple commercial reasons: increased sales and lower costs. Commercial quantities of sugar were added to food because food with sugar sells better than food without sugar (yes, it really is that simple). And man-made fats were introduced because foods made with polyunsaturated seed oils are cheaper than foods made with animal fats. This means, of course, that there are powerful financial incentives to keep both in the food supply for as long as possible.

Why sugar and polyunsaturated fats are bad for us

In my books Sweet Poison and The Sweet Poison Quit Plan I went through the evidence against sugar in detail. When I first started to look into things, I was motivated by a very simple plan – to be less fat. And it worked. But along the way I discovered that science says much more about sugar than that it induces a fat tummy. In fact, sugar bypasses delicately balanced systems that tightly control our appetite and blood-sugar levels. Once our system is out of balance, we career like an out-of-control car towards the cliff face of obesity and a list of other chronic diseases that grows with the publication of each new study. Oh, and just for fun, sugar is highly addictive and therefore impossible to eliminate from our diet without conscious effort.

As I read the evidence against sugar, I kept coming across studies on fat. It was clear that fat could not possibly do the things the nutrition dogma suggested. It was also abundantly clear that once we fix the appetite-control system broken by sugar, fat will take care of itself. Once we're back in possession of a functional appetite-control system, we can and do tightly regulate our fat consumption automatically. But under the surface of the studies I read was a worrying line of evidence that suggested it matters very much what type of fat we consume, because although our body can't detect whether fats are saturated or unsaturated, these fats can still make a dramatic difference to how our body functions.

Strange as it sounds, to most cells in our body, oxygen is a dangerous substance. Oxygen is highly reactive. When it reacts with iron we get rust. When it reacts with wood, we get fire (if the temperature is right). And when it reacts with fat, it breaks that fat down into a range of dangerous chemicals and destroys the integrity of any cell made from fat – which is every cell in our body. We have two defences against this process of oxidation. First, most of the fat we make (and until a hundred years ago, most of the fat we ate) does not oxidise much – saturated fat is the stainless steel of the cellular world. Secondly, for any fat that is oxidised, we have our own little fire brigade – a bunch of homemade chemicals called anti-oxidants.

Polyunsaturated fats are exactly the opposite: they react quickly with oxygen. This is a very, very bad thing in a body that needs to be as oxygen-resistant as possible. Oxidated fats can lead to the random destruction and out-of-control cellular growth otherwise known as cancer. And they can create the lesions that lead to heart disease. Both processes are helped enormously by the huge quantities of sugar in a normal Western diet. In the last hundred years we've gradually and systematically replaced all the saturated fats in our diet with destructive polyunsaturated fats. And just for good measure, we've added huge quantities of sugar to make the destruction happen quickly.

Sugar has given us diabetes, dementia and obesity. And polyunsaturated fats have given us cancer. Together they've combined to give us heart disease. Both were added to our diets in bulk long before ingredients were tested for their health impacts or safety. And both have combined to create seemingly untreatable epidemics in just three generations.

What's a seed oil?

We've been told that the secret to curing heart disease is to consume unsaturated vegetable oils rather than saturated animal fats. So now all the fats in our processed foods are labelled 'vegetable oil' and the labels are rarely more specific than that.

The irony is that there is no such thing as oil from a vegetable. The products being pushed to us as vegetable oils are fruit oils (coconut, palm, olive or avocado), nut oils (macadamia, peanut, pecan, and so on) or seed oils (canola, sunflower, soy or rice bran).

There's nothing much wrong with the fruit oils (I'll go into why later) and some of the nut oils are okay, too. But the seed oils are extraordinarily dangerous. And unfortunately they make up almost all of the 'vegetable oils' in our food.

The diet, exercise and supplements industries

Cashing in on the confusion and misinformation about the causes of obesity, heart disease and cancer, a group of huge industries has come of age. The diet, exercise and supplements industries did not exist before World War II, but in 60 short years they've built an empire that rivals those of sugar and seed oils themselves. At first the sugar and seed-oil sellers were happy to encourage these growing healthy-living sectors – after all, they made sure everybody was looking in exactly the wrong direction – but now the sugar and seed-oil mega-corporations are scooping up those sectors, too.

There's never been any evidence that counting calories (or fat or carbs) will make us thin. The evidence has never suggested that exercise will have any effect on our weight other than to increase our appetite. Nor has it given credence to the theory that we're functionally deficient in any of the substances in a multivitamin tablet or any other supplement. But this complete lack of evidence has not slowed the exponential growth of the diet, exercise and supplements industries. And just like desperate gamblers, we keep coming back to them, despite abundant proof that it will fail just as it did last time.

About this book

This book lays out the evidence against sugar and seed oils, and provides practical and effective advice on how to avoid eating them. The first part of this book gives the facts about the things we're urged to do every minute of our waking lives. It tells us why diets will not make us thin, why exercise makes us hungrier rather than lighter and why supplements are just a very effective way to flush your hard-earned dosh away. The second part of the book presents the evidence against the real culprits of chronic disease: sugar and seed oils. And the third part translates that evidence into practical advice on how to live in a society where almost every man-made food is filled to the brim with sugar and seed oils.

The first two parts do occasionally dive deeply into the evidence. I try to translate it into language even I could understand, but it does get hairy at times, so stick with me – it's worth it. In this book I attack most of the basic assumptions we make about our health. I don't do that lightly. It's important that the evidence be presented in full for two reasons. First, vested interests and their handmaidens will attack what I say repeatedly, so I must present the evidence clearly and unequivocally. Secondly, I don't expect you to trust me any more than I trust the folks selling us fructose, seed oils, statins and weight-loss programs. You must be able to jump past my interpretation and go straight to the source (if you want to). The comprehensive 'Notes' section at the back of this book gives details of the original scientific papers and books from which the information in this book is drawn.

Commercial forces have provided us with the most perfectly destructive combination of chronically dangerous chemicals I could imagine. And those same commercial forces have worked to ensure we do nothing effective about changing that. This book exists because I desperately hope that with a little knowledge we can all vote with our feet and change the rules of the game before the game kills us.

Strap yourself in – let's do this thing.

As mentioned, I haven't read the book, just the Introduction and hearing the author interviewed on ABC Radio last weekend. For someone though that didn't have a weight problem back in the 1950's, 60's and 70's, I've become obese and my weight has yo-yo'd over the years as I attempted to get things under control. Without having read the evidence the author provides, his interview and this Introduction seemed to make sense.

There are only two types of cyclist.Those that have crashed and those that are about to.

From my understanding of it he does not intend people to not eat fruit at all. He is certainly against fruit juices, bars, dried pieces etc as he says you basically get very few of the nutrients and lots of the sugars. He does say to moderate the fruit especially the high sugar ones.

Most people are aware of the sugar in cereals at the shops, have a look at your BBQ sauce, ours is something like 40 or 50% sugar. Have a look at the dolmio type pasta sauces, very high in sugar. (we make our own). Even tinned diced tomato has added sugar, mostly. I could go on, bread is another that surprised me.

Comedian wrote:Oh buck me I've never seen a post that long on a public forum!

Happily... I think I agree with it. I wouldn't say our family has cut out sugar completely but we've certainly reduced it greatly.

I had a few hot cross buns yesterday with jam on and sent my intestines into a spin and felt like crap! Staying off the sugar is the way to go.

Hi mate, sorry about the post being so long, you'd think I had shares in the book

With regard to you saying you felt like crap after eating hot cross buns with jam, my wife and I have noticed that ALL our grandkids start bouncing off the walls if we give them (so called) food loaded with sugar. We've noticed it for some time now to the point that with two of them the behavioral issues become so bad that we never give them sugar laden food or drink. Our friends have also intimated that they have problems with their kids after eating chocolate or high sugar foods. It was those issues in particular that grabbed my attention when I heard David Gillespie interviewed on ABC Radio. There is definitely something going on there.

One thing for sure, he's right when he claims there are massive and powerful vested interests at work attempting to keep us consuming highly processed food. Just open your eyes and stroll around any supermarket taking note of what dominates shelf space.

There are only two types of cyclist.Those that have crashed and those that are about to.

bookworm1707 wrote:I have heard the interview a few times and read the book.

From my understanding of it he does not intend people to not eat fruit at all. He is certainly against fruit juices, bars, dried pieces etc as he says you basically get very few of the nutrients and lots of the sugars. He does say to moderate the fruit especially the high sugar ones.

Most people are aware of the sugar in cereals at the shops, have a look at your BBQ sauce, ours is something like 40 or 50% sugar. Have a look at the dolmio type pasta sauces, very high in sugar. (we make our own). Even tinned diced tomato has added sugar, mostly. I could go on, bread is another that surprised me.

I agree and the problem we punters have is that we are largely being kept in the dark.I have a close relative heavily involved in the "health food" industry. He claims we can't even count on the nutritional information supplied by manufacturers to be correct for many reasons, and that many nutritional panels on foods we buy are pure fiction.I think it best if we stick to natural foods, particularly those of us that are prone to gaining weight.

There are only two types of cyclist.Those that have crashed and those that are about to.

iMad wrote:This is very long post and I may upset some by doing it but I do it with the best intentions. It is the Introduction to David Gillespie's new book 'Big Fat Lies' about sugar and poly-unsaturated oils and their impact on diet and health.(DISCLAIMER: Other than the fact that I have ordered the book, I have no other vested interest in its promotion.)

I've known heaps of overweight people who eat very little processed food - unrefined starch, alcohol, and caffeine cravings afflict them, in addition to late nights, insomnia, fatigue, and sedentary lifestyle.....sugar and polyunsaturated fat don't rate.

David needs to expand his scientific reading, in his down time from practising law, to add an iron clad explanation for starch cravings, to go with his iron clad views on everything else.

iMad wrote:This is very long post and I may upset some by doing it but I do it with the best intentions. It is the Introduction to David Gillespie's new book 'Big Fat Lies' about sugar and poly-unsaturated oils and their impact on diet and health.(DISCLAIMER: Other than the fact that I have ordered the book, I have no other vested interest in its promotion.)

I've known heaps of overweight people who eat very little processed food - unrefined starch, alcohol, and caffeine cravings afflict them, in addition to late nights, insomnia, fatigue, and sedentary lifestyle.....sugar and polyunsaturated fat don't rate.

David needs to expand his scientific reading, in his down time from practising law, to add an iron clad explanation for starch cravings, to go with his iron clad views on everything else.

Have you read his book?I haven't so can't comment with any authority BUT... as I said, I have witnessed many times the effect sugary foods and drinks (including Macca's) have on our grandkids. The personality and behavioral change can be quite staggering. The significant difference between sugar addiction and as you put it "unrefined starch, alcohol, and caffeine cravings afflict them, in addition to late nights, insomnia, fatigue, and sedentary lifestyle.....sugar and polyunsaturated fat don't rate." is that the cravings you mentioned are easily able to be avoided or altered if desired. Alcohol and caffeine are NOT added to almost everything we eat. Sugar is.

There are only two types of cyclist.Those that have crashed and those that are about to.

Yeah I've read David's stuff, listened to him several times, and skimmed his reference lists. IMO, he needs to expand his reading of medical literature so he understands the shortcomings of his simplified view. i.e. His view doesn't explain the cravings associated with bulimia nervosa, or various endocrine disturbances.

Yeah lost me in the first line... I eat a lot of fruit and will keep doing so. J am over weight by eating extremely healthily ... Just too much. I need sugar when I race and train hard... Dried fruit are certainly better than gels and bars... But gels and bars have their place as well. My main problem apart from not being able to exercise was I did not eat enough protein on my vege diet.

Started riding July 2011 distance 17km height 195cm weight 128kgPicked up speed and distance quickly with first 100 in oct 11, second in sept at @28.5kph.My weight seemed stuck although legs changed. Worked it out that unless I reduced calories nothing would change.Started 4 weeks of lite n easy in jan12 sand dropped 7kg.

March 12. Weight 117.8kgRiding 170-250km per week.

Goal drop 6kg by end of April before Sydney to surfers ride.Ultimate goal sub 100kg by 2013.

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